We're part of an unimaginably huge universe and fall into despair because it's not what we think it should be. It fails to meet our expectations. Doesn't it seem we're a bit too full of ourselves? — Ciceronianus the White

Not at all. This is where the ancient Stoics differ importantly from modern popular stoicism.

The ancient Stoics believed that one is part of nature, that one has something divine in oneself. As a modern person, can you really believe that?

This ancient belief about being part of nature and having some part in the divine is what makes ancient Stoicism livable, it's what stops it from being merely a quietist nihilism.
Whereas modern popular stoicism, stripped of all metaphysical foundations, is just a quietist nihilism, implicitly telling us, "You're worthelss. You should just bow your head, kneel, and accept your fate. There is no place for you in this world."

"Doesn't it seem we're a bit too full of ourselves?" -- I don't think the ancient Stoics would say that.

So you'd be very surprised if life didn't exist elsewhere, but think proving it; knowing for sure is a trivial matter. — counterpunch

In terms of costs and solving engineering problems the matter is, of course, tremendous.
But beyond that, what's the point? To find another planet for humans to destroy it?
Rather than make an effort to work things out here on Earth, the solution is to go "business as usual", and consume up another planet, and eventually, what, the whole Universe? Because mankind's appetite knows no bounds nor should any limits be imposed on it?

If the only reason for space exploration is to prove the Abrahamic religions wrong then they will have served yet another useful purpose!

That's just so pathetic.

What I want is a philosophical exposition of Buddhism at the level of basic assumptions. — Constance

Such a thing exists:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhidhamma_Pi%E1%B9%ADaka:

The Abhidhamma Piṭaka (Pali; Sanskrit: Abhidharma Piṭaka; English: Basket of Higher Doctrine) is a collection of canonical texts in the Theravada Buddhist tradition.[1] Together with the Vinaya Piṭaka and the Sutta Piṭaka it comprises the Tipiṭaka, the "Three Baskets" of canonical Theravada Buddhist texts.[1]

The Abhidhamma Piṭaka is a detailed scholastic analysis and summary of the Buddha's teachings in the Suttas. Here the suttas are reworked into a schematized system of general principles that might be called 'Buddhist Psychology'. In the Abhidhamma, the generally dispersed teachings and principles of the suttas are organized into a coherent science of Buddhist doctrine.

Why? The matter is trivial. (And they're spending billions on it.)

What if space exploration is a subtle and blatantly desperate attempt to prove the Abrahamic religions wrong?! Oh!

Ethics/morality, it seems to me, is about caring for oneself by making the world a better place. — tim wood

This can mean so many things, be taken so many ways.
The Nazis, for example, too, cared about themselves by "making the world a better place".

Call it a kind of group care that flowers from the root through individuals. Or the lesson from the dialogues: no one really chooses to be bad (meaning that no one who really knows or understands anything chooses to be bad) because ultimately the bad man hurts himself.

If life is all about boosting one's ego (and there's no indication that it isn't), then one could be lying in a ditch and still think himself king.

The a**hole over there is not your warrant to be one, because if you go that way, then you're one and the world, your corner of it, goes to hell.

This isn't what the world seems to function like. I know many assholes whose corner of the world looks very nice, expensively furnished.

There is more power in your turn the other cheek than is dreamt of....

People who advocate turning the other cheek are people who never practice it themselves. Jesus didn't.

That is, morality/ethics is a set of rules, variously based depending on the system. As such in themselves no compulsive force at all.

If they're not compulsive, how can they be relevant?

So it seems to me that in dismissing them, you have simply not understood them.

What do you mean?
Whom have I dismissed?

....all that, and upon finding out what morality is, one might also find another domain to which “getting away with” has power. — Mww

I don't understand what you mean. Do say more.

I think it would be extremely extraordinary if life existed only on Earth.

To correctly judge something it's wise to first find out what that things is. It appears you have not done that. So the question: what is it exactly that you suppose ethics/morality to be? — tim wood

Like I said

things that by traditional morality, would be considered immoral or otherwise bad. — baker

and

Why bother about other people,their lives and their property, when you can get away with endangering and damaging it. — baker

I think (or at least, I used to think) ethics/morality is, to great extent, about not doing harm to other people and their property.

Groups have a much better chance of survival than individuals. Moral conduct by the majority is necessary for those groups to form. Therefore moral conduct is evolutionarily advantageous on a whole. — khaled

In other words, the behavior of my neighbors is advantageous. They are part of a group that protects them. I am sure they consider their behavior moral.

What is your point?

Of course groups are advantagoues. Gangs, mobs, nepotism, cronyism. How does this prove that morality is worthwhile?

The question is, what practical good is there in virtuous behavior regarding liberation and enlightenment? — Constance

In that one cannot meaningfully hope to become free from suffering (ie. become enlightened) if one occasionally or regularly drinks alcohol or smokes pot. Or robs banks. Or kill animals for sport. And so on.

The idea that one can have a glass of wine with one's dinner, and still be(come) enlightened is a decadent Western invention. As are many others.

And here it is the eight fold path: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right meditation. Well, there are a hundred ways I can think of to direct a person to a disciplined life, but the bottom line is not the virtuous behavior, is it?

The value of virtuous behavior is something one needs to experience for oneself.

The point is not this. It is liberation. How this is achieved is not a singular path, though all paths are of the same nature, which is a turning away from the many engagements towards a rather mystical unity.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no religion or spirituality that actually contains the tenet "All paths lead to the top of the mountain. All paths are equally good." Rather, this is a bit of ecumenical meta-religious/meta-spiritual doctrine that no existing religion/spirituality supports.

That term mystical is mine, and is one reason I don't care to ask the Buddha if it is authorized: when one turns away from everydayness, one takes normal standards of interpreting the world away as well.

This is awfully general. It works for, say, Nazi ideology as well: that, too, was a turning away from everydayness.

One can rightly say, there is only one virtue, and that is achieving the extraordinary state of mind, not to put too fine a point on it, achieved by the Buddha.

That's a bit like saying, "Oh, just get your own jumbo jet!"

If the Buddha was an extraordinary phenomenologist (your linked essay) then why not just do what phenomenologists do with Buddhism in the world and forget what is natural or foreign?

My reasons for distancing myself from Buddhism are several, and complex, and have nothing per se to do with Early Buddhism.

The Snow Man — Ciceronianus the White

Reminds me of this:

"Rahula, develop the meditation in tune with earth. For when you are developing the meditation in tune with earth, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind. Just as when people throw what is clean or unclean on the earth — feces, urine, saliva, pus, or blood — the earth is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted by it; in the same way, when you are developing the meditation in tune with earth, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind.

"Develop the meditation in tune with water. For when you are developing the meditation in tune with water, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind. Just as when people wash what is clean or unclean in water — feces, urine, saliva, pus, or blood — the water is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted by it; in the same way, when you are developing the meditation in tune with water, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind.

"Develop the meditation in tune with fire. For when you are developing the meditation in tune with fire, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind. Just as when fire burns what is clean or unclean — feces, urine, saliva, pus, or blood — it is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted by it; in the same way, when you are developing the meditation in tune with fire, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind.

"Develop the meditation in tune with wind. For when you are developing the meditation in tune with wind, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind. Just as when wind blows what is clean or unclean — feces, urine, saliva, pus, or blood — it is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted by it; in the same way, when you are developing the meditation in tune with wind, agreeable & disagreeable sensory impressions that have arisen will not stay in charge of your mind.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.062.than.html

To me, rebirth is a metaphysical idea — Constance

One of the perspectives that one can derive from Early Buddhism is that an insight into rebirth follows from an insight into the workings of karma. As in: There is karma, therefore, there is rebirth. Which is why rebirth is not a metaphysical idea the way heaven, hell, etc. in Christianity or Hinduism are, or Platonic forms.

only to be approached by first observing the world.

It's difficult to have a conversation on a very specific topic when not all involved are familiar enough with Buddhist doctrine. And it's too much to try to bring in all relevant references and clarify all points of contention at once.

I mean, this is how metaphysics has any reasonable standing at all.

The thing is that in Early Buddhism, one wouldn't start off with a catechism-like set of doctrines. But, quite on the contrary, start exactly where one is at the moment.
For example, like this:

/.../ Then Mahapajapati Gotami went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, stood to one side. As she was standing there she said to him: "It would be good, lord, if the Blessed One would teach me the Dhamma in brief such that, having heard the Dhamma from the Blessed One, I might dwell alone, secluded, heedful, ardent, & resolute."

"Gotami, the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to passion, not to dispassion; to being fettered, not to being unfettered; to accumulating, not to shedding; to self-aggrandizement, not to modesty; to discontent, not to contentment; to entanglement, not to seclusion; to laziness, not to aroused persistence; to being burdensome, not to being unburdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher's instruction.'

"As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.'"

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an08/an08.053.than.html

One could reflect this way and act accordingly, over and over again, day in day out. With nothing further, in terms of doctrinal points.
It's a kind of actionable religious/spiritual meta-minimalism that I haven't seen in any other religion/spirituality that I know of.

I am not interested in early Buddhism any more than Kierkegaard is interested in Christendom.
I look to its essential features, and by essential I mean what is conducive to liberation and enlightenment, the brass ring of all Eastern philosophy.

For this, you'd actually need to know what Early Buddhism is, which you don't seem to.

I am trying to accommodate baker, but he wants Buddhism to stay in the comfort of the 650 BCE's. This is an extraordinary time, granted, and but there was a deficit in interpretative language to explain it.

No, rather it's that you simply don't know the suttas. You're dismissing something without even knowing what it is. You're tailoring Early Buddhism after Christianity. I'm trying to show that it's not like it.

IT being meditation and the place of realization deep in the interior of the self.

Further evidence that you don't know the suttas, yet are dismissing them.
You're devising your own parallel Buddhism, and I don't quite see the point in doing that.

I lean more toward Hinduism.

In fact you do, with your implicit dogmatism, in the way you approach religious epistemology.

As I see it, there is only one basis for belief in reincarnation, and that is the metaethical argument that I have tried make clear several times here and there. Put briefly, the world is ethically impossible without something like reincarnation and samsara. It is a complex argument, but it is a metaphysical one that moves from the world to what must be the case given the way the world is, adn the world demands an explanatory extension where observation cannot go. Pretty simple, really: Why, are we born to suffer and die? is a question that haunts us. The question then goes to suffering and I have put this forth earlier elsewhere more than once. If you like, because it IS after all THE issue of the world and the self, we can discuss this.

This is actually more like what cradle Buddhists in traditionally Buddhist countries (and similarly, cradle Hindus) believe about rebirth/reincarnation and karma -- that it's a kind of grand metaphysical justice system which also provides people with the purpose and meaning of life and makes all the suffering seem worthwhile.
It's an unreflected, dogmatic approach to the issue, typical for religions and for people who were born and raised into a religion. Issues of karma and rebirth become metaphysical when they are treated in a dogmatic manner.

A more reflexive approach would be like this:

Things are simply the way they are. They don't give us suffering. Like a thorn: Does a sharp thorn give us suffering? No. It's simply a thorn. It doesn't give suffering to anybody. If we step on it, we suffer immediately.

Why do we suffer? Because we stepped on it. So the suffering comes from us.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/insimpleterms.html

Or like this:

Look at the affairs of your body and mind. Now that we're born, why do we suffer? We suffer from the same old things, but we haven't thought them through. We don't know them thoroughly. We suffer but we don't really see suffering. When we live at home, we suffer from our wife and children, but no matter how much we suffer, we don't really see suffering — so we keep on suffering.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/chah/shapeofacircle.html

Or like this:

In formulating a question on the first level, you create the frame of a sentence and leave part of the frame blank. The important feature of the blank is that it’s not an amorphous hole. It’s more like the shape of a missing piece of a puzzle.
Only a piece that matches the shape and the pattern of the puzzle will fit. If you ask, “Why am I suffering?” and are told, “42,” you won’t be satisfied with the answer, for it’s not just a wrong piece from the right puzzle. It’s from the wrong puzzle entirely.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/skill-in-questions.pdf

If you fill the horn, have you not essentially painted the surface with a finite amount of paint? So it would seem that the surface cannot be painted, yet in fact is paintable. — tim wood

You painted the internal surface of the horn, but not the external one, which is bigger, even if just infinitesimally. How is this accounted for?

One may choose to believe the words attributed to the Buddha or Jesus Christ, or not, that is the beauty of freedom of religion. — Present awareness

Freedom of religion as freedom of delusion?

And worse, "choose to believe" -- IOW, epistemic trivialism as foundation for religious choice?!

/facepalm/

So all our philosophical resistance is futile.
— baker

In the short term? Yes.
In the long term? Maybe. — Gus Lamarch

So you're optimistic like that? Tell me more!

On the grounds of what do you think that our philosophical resistance is not futile in the long run?

But really, it should be with ideas, not resentment over offences to the purity of the Buddha's words. — Constance

No, for me here, it has nothing to do with "offences to the purity of the Buddha's words". You keep bringing this up, but you're barking up the wrong tree. I'm not a Buddhist, I can't be offended this way.

When people make stuff up and ascribe it to someone else, it takes a lot of time and effort to untangle the mess, a mess that could have been avoided in the first place if the person would simply quote what that other person said, instead of making stuff up. It's a colossal waste of time.

This latter is more like a cult, like being hung up on Jesus' words, as the Bible tells us.

*sigh*

*sigh*

This is not the point. The point is to understand and have the explanatory resources, not to recall, but to reason out.

If you don't even understand the relevance of virtuous behavior for epistemic purposes, then I'm not sure what to tell you.




Anyway, I've been engaging in some discussions of Buddhism in an effort to find closure to my involvement with Buddhism. But it's only in these discussions lately that I've come to realize that even though early Buddhism seemed so natural to me (and still does), I'm beginning to see just how foreign early Buddhism is to many other people ... I've gravely underestimated that for some 20 years.

I'm not the one making stuff up about what nirvana is or isn't, nor putting words into the mouth of a religious figure. Unlike some.

If happiness results in sadness, why be happy? — synthesis

Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Well, karma's a bitch.

Are you black by any chance?

humans, possessed of a more complex language, should be capable of understanding languages that are simpler, in fact too simple, like animal languages. Hence, The Too Simple Paradox Of Language. — TheMadFool

This sounds a bit like the "curse of knowledge/expertise":

The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.[1] This bias is also called by some authors the curse of expertise,[2] although that term is also used to refer to various other phenomena.

For example, in a classroom setting, teachers have difficulty teaching novices because they cannot put themselves in the position of the student. A brilliant professor might no longer remember the difficulties that a young student encounters when learning a new subject. This curse of knowledge also explains the danger behind thinking about student learning based on what appears best to faculty members, as opposed to what has been verified with students.[3]
/.../
Such research drew from Baruch Fischhoff's work in 1975 surrounding hindsight bias, a cognitive bias that knowing the outcome of a certain event makes it seem more predictable than may actually be true.[5] Research conducted by Fischhoff revealed that participants did not know that their outcome knowledge affected their responses, and, if they did know, they could still not ignore or defeat the effects of the bias. Study participants could not accurately reconstruct their previous, less knowledgeable states of mind, which directly relates to the curse of knowledge. This poor reconstruction was theorized by Fischhoff to be because the participant was "anchored in the hindsightful state of mind created by receipt of knowledge".[6] This receipt of knowledge returns to the idea of the curse proposed by Camerer, Loewenstein, and Weber: a knowledgeable person cannot accurately reconstruct what a person, be it themselves or someone else, without the knowledge would think, or how they would act. In his paper, Fischhoff questions the failure to empathize with ourselves in less knowledgeable states, and notes that how well people manage to reconstruct perceptions of lesser informed others is a crucial question for historians and "all human understanding".[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

Nope. I'm not the one making stuff up.

So all our philosophical resistance is futile.

No. It's called being silenced by a mob. — Book273

Yet the world has worked that way for millennia.

Do you recall a day of life when you didn't walk on eggshells? Honestly?

I live in a society where a man on a TV politics talk show was told by a member of the audience that his opinion was illegitimate because of his skin colour; and that woman thought she was in the right - because the man was white. I live in a country pervaded by a form of reverse identity politics - that clothes itself in the garb of moral righteousness while stereotyping people, and discriminating against them on that basis. — counterpunch

This is simply small town mentality, it has been around for millennia. It just seems more egregious when it's broadcatsed on tv and the internetz.

Lurking behind this entire discussion is the question “what is the proper relationship b/w the university and the government?”, and that is a question that is very old, reaching all the way back to when the university was called the “academy”. — Todd Martin

And back when it was only the elites who had access to higher education. It seems that the elites somehow figured out what is proper to say and what isn't and didn't make much of a fuss about it, or settled it with a duel.

Troubles began when higher education became open to plebeians who didn't have the necessary class prowess required to handle social issues gracefully. And when duels became officially illegal.

Freedom imposed by law with legal penalties for not obeying its strictures is tyranny in double-think. — unenlightened

Plebeification on steroids.

So there are limits to free speech. On what grounds? — Isaac

I suspect that the free speech clause in the US might have been actually motivated in a similar way as freedom of religion.

Namely, I once heard the opinion, which I find plausible, that the constitutional clause on the freedom of religion in the US was intended to get the various Christian factions to stop fighting with eachother for supremacy (because they were causing general unrest and collateral damage with those fights). It wasn't out of some deep appreciation of religious diversity or notions of equality.

I think this goes for free speech as well. Imposed equality is one of the government's ways to get people to watch their words, talk less, or to shut up altogether.


It's the same as getting a bunch of children to stop fighting over toys: give them all the same type of toy. Or even better: make them earn their toys by cleaning toilets.

The method of questions and answers is one of the ways to organize one's thoughts. "Where have I put my red socks? -- In the bottom drawer."

In this method, the question isn't a true question of the kind "What is the half-life of caesium-137?", but simply a part of the means to organize one's thoughts.

The Socratic method is a way to help another person organize their thoughts in a particular way; and one can use this same method in one's own thinking as well (after one has learned the method). It's more dynamic than just using declarative sentences and it makes it easier to point out the salient bit of information.

So you don't have personal experience, nor can you quote actual sources, but still you can make claims about nirvana ...

Really, you live in a society where people don't have to walk on eggshells all the time??!

You don't get to delegitimise, shout down, drown out and de-platform other people — counterpunch

It's not possible to do so anyway, so the whole idea is a non-starter. Deplatforming would be possible if there would exist neutral communication avenues, a no-man's land where everyone would equally belong and not belong. But there is no such place.

Every newspaper, every tv and radio station, every website, every youtube channel, every physical space fit for any kind of communication is owned by someone, and that person or organization gets to call the shots on what can be said there and what can't.

That's why, for example, Twitter closing down someone's account is not an act against free speech: because Twitter is a private company, and it is fully in their right to decide whose posts they will publish and whose they won't.

How Kafkaesque! Always on trial for a crime you might commit by saying something someone else might find offensive. — counterpunch

Yes. It's called "being civilized".

Remember, I am explicitly trying to think outside of the historical belief systems of Buddhism. — Constance

The early Buddhist teachings on karma and rebirth are _not_ mere "historical trappings".

One may ask:
"Can we strip the Buddha's teachings of any mention of rebirth and still get the full benefits of what he had to teach? In other words, can we drop the Buddha's worldview while keeping his psychology and still realize everything it has to offer?"

See here for the answer: The Truth of Rebirth And Why it Matters for Buddhist Practice.

I only want to know what meditation is at the level of basic assumptions.

You're trying to force the issue. More below.

I mean, what really happens in this event in which one sits, ceases thinking, wanting, anticipating, and does this rigorously over time?

I don't know what happens in that event, because what you describe is some new-agey meditation mishamash that has nothing to do with Buddhism.

Buddhists famously want the purity of the event to be untainted by presuppositions,

Well, as long as those self-declared "Buddhists" are also New Agers or practitioners of corporate mindfulness (that's a term, look it up).


Like I said, you've been trying to force the issue. You've been trying to strip Buddhism of everything that "makes it Buddhist" and you're trying to find some Buddhism-independent truth but one which also happens to be at the core of Buddhism.

I'm saying you're wrong to do this, on multiple levels.

I'll briefly touch on one here:

Buddhism has a virtue epistemology. It supposes that in order to know the truth, one needs to practice a sufficient measure of virtue. The trio sila, samādhi, and pañña is central: moral conduct, concentration (meditation), and wisdom. These are the three fundamental categories of training. One has to train in all three, simultaneously and progressively. One cannot have one without the other.

In contrast, the popular mindfulness movement is trying to force the issue by focusing primarily or solely on the concentration/meditation, but generally avoiding the Buddhist prescription of the necessity of moral behavior, which is captured for lay people in the first five precepts.
Some philosophers are trying to force the issue by focusing on the wisdom component, and, again, neglecting morality and the actual practice of meditation.

The idea that one could force the issue like that and figure out the truth about Buddhism or the truth that "Buddhism is about" is incompatible with the actual Buddhist practice. It's akin to someone claiming he wants to learn to swim, but who refuses to even approach the water.

If the government has decided that universities need a "free speech champion" then free speech has been being stifled for a long time. — Book273

And now they are gong to actively, governmentally champion stifling free speech!

The dogmatic view of certain religions kills the individual and transforms the herd's view in such a way that their actions, reactions, and emotions are almost made unconscious. — Gus Lamarch

And yet they rule the world.

Sarcasm travels poorly online.

I was agreeing with you. I don't know why some people believe that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't the truth.

Personally, I believe that the truth can never hurt.
There is a certain feeling that can come with a sobering realization or discovery, but that feeling is not hurt.

That the more difficult something is to believe the more “genuine” or “correct” it is.

A morphing from “Truth can hurt” to “What hurts is the truth”. — khaled

Yes. If it doesn't hurt, it ain't the truth.

I was even told once, and I remember this verbatim: A truth that doesn't condemn the one who speaks it is no truth at all.

In fact I'd add 'the self' itself. As in 'true to yourself, 'not being yourself'... As if there were some sacred fixed point from which certain feelings rebelliously deviate. — Isaac

I think this "just be true to yourself" (BTW, funny how people love to quote that line from Hamlet, when it's said by the one of the dumbest characters in the play) is not a lie, but a domination strategy and a self-defense strategy, and I suspect that people are aware of this.

Santa Claus was good while he lasted, but the hope for some sort of imaginary gift-giver, some sort of sugar-daddy, lingers on. — Bitter Crank

The Santa Claus story is an age-appropriate strategy to instill in children this hope, so that they can later on become sugar daddies and sugar mamas themselves (such as to their parents, ideally), and to not have qualms about looking for a sugar daddy or sugar mama and to use such relationships to their advantage.
It's corporate primig for toddlers!

you are born and you receive an education, and you become this education, and once you have been duly assimilated into a culture with its language and history, and then, there is your private history that ends up becoming a repository for future possibilities, the plot and character development, if you will, of the narrative you will write into existence.

But the rub: this is the way of everyday living, and everyone lives this life of unfolding affairs with implicit trust and unquestioned confidence, and one is entirely absorbed in the grand narrative. — Constance

Oh god, no.
Where do people get such ideas ...

Then one opens a copy of Heidegger's Being and Time, and begins to question, and if s/he is lucky, or unlucky, there is an epiphanic moment of startling awareness that there is a discontinuity in our questioning self and the world that is there to meet questions at the basic level. /.../ Most are not disturbed by this, that is, until they start reading Heidegger.

Eh ...?
No, one most certainly doesn't need to read Heidegger for that. Oh dear.

For me, it is the question, "why are we born to suffer and die?"

If you like to question basic assumptions, then how about qualifying the above as a mere assumption and questioning it?

Are we really born to suffer and die?
We suffer, and we die, yes, but is this all we're born to??

Bear in mind that people's compassion and generosity are not infinite.
So be careful how you appeal to them.